Dawn of the Living-Impaired Page 6
A storm of arrows descended upon them, and though many found their mark and lodged in flesh, they could not do much harm. Some of Sveinthor's draugr were so bristling with arrow-shafts by the time they reached the base of the wall that they looked like hedge-hogs, and still they advanced.
Hildirid stood atop the burial mound, her hair and sealskin cloak streaming around her in the dire wind that had sprung up. Bryn-Loki sat at her side, and her hand still stroked his head and scratched his ears, for he was whining in disappointment at having been left behind from the battle to guard her.
Now, from the fort came flaming arrows, but many of the draugr had lain so long in the rain and mud that they did little more than smolder. One or two, fatter men in life, burned like tallow, and became shuffling candles in the shapes of men. The smoke from their singed hair and charred, rotting bodies blew back over the wall, filling the fort with an abominable stench.
At last, a few of the bravest defenders came out to meet their foes, but they soon fell, and the draugr swarmed over the wall and into the fortress. Even from where she stood, Hildirid could hear the cries of pain and anguish and terror, and the ghastly sounds of feeding as Sveinthor's followers feasted on quivering, still-warm flesh.
Later, when quiet had descended and the night was almost done, she took Bryn-Loki and ventured into the fort. Everywhere she looked were draugr, plundering the newly-dead and adorning themselves with medallions and arm-rings, or taking trophies of scalps and fingers and jawbones and heads. The living – the women and children and slaves taken from among Kjartan's people – cowered, unharmed and ignored.
Then she saw Kjartan himself, freed from his prison and seated upon his great wooden chair, draped with bearskins. Ulfgrim's body, bound in ropes, lay before him with a pool of blood around the stump of his neck. His head was held aloft on the point of Wolf's Tooth, raised high by Sveinthor.
Kjartan saw her, as well. "He will not stay, Hildirid," the king said. "He must return to the burial-mound, before dawn comes. He has fulfilled his wyrd."
No amount of imploring by them could sway Sveinthor. As the sky to the east brightened, the draugr left off what they were doing. Almost as one, they left the fort and returned to the field, lying down again where they had died and then arisen. Eyjolf, Bork, Thrain, and their women entered the tomb, followed by Bryn-Loki.
Only Sveinthor remained. He had Ulfgrim's head knotted by the hair to his belt, and Wolf's Tooth was finally released from his grip to be sheathed again across his back. With his one good hand, he reached out and caressed the curve of Hildirid's cheek. Then he turned from her, and walked toward the mound.
"Farewell, lord," Hildirid said to Kjartan, and kissed him.
"Hildirid!" the king called. "Where do you go? What do you do?"
"As you said, lord, Sveinthor has fulfilled his wyrd." She touched the knife at her belt, and smiled. "Now I shall fulfill mine."
So saying, she followed Sveinthor into the darkness. When the sun rose, the entrance to the mound was covered over again with planks and stones and earth. Never again was it disturbed by mortal men.
And so ends the saga of Sveinthor the Unkillable, and the beautiful Hildirid, his beloved barrow-maid.
CURED MEAT
The den is cool, the dirt sandy and dry beneath us. We stir. Slow and sluggish at first, bodies stiff, joints cracking, tendons creaking.
Day. Sunshine as we emerge. Early warmth baking into us, easing away the night chill, the lethargy.
Those with good eyes and ears take turns at sentry duty. Watching. Listening. Alert for anything that might mean danger … or prey.
We are all very hungry.
We are always very hungry.
But first, we must groom.
There are ragged edges, peeling flaps, dangling pieces. There are stringy ends of veins poking out, tough gristle, splinters of bone. There are crunchy little worms that tunnel deep, crawling ants, clumps of maggots to be scraped from damp crevices, bug-kind that lay eggs in us.
The damp is bad.
The damp makes us soft, spongy, loose. The damp makes us slimy and green. The damp makes us rot.
We groom.
Fingers and teeth. Pinching, plucking, nipping, gnawing, nibbling. Skin scraps, bits of flesh, parasites. We rub with sand to scour and dry. We dust-roll. We turn to follow the sun.
The small or weak or damaged do their part. They attend the big and the strong and the whole. Even those who become too impaired to be useful are good for one final thing.
We are all, always, very hungry.
The meat of our own kind fills, but never satisfies. We are sun-dried, salt-crusted, smoked. Hard to chew.
The meat of bird-kind, bug-kind, beast-kind, fish-kind … that meat fills and almost satisfies. Almost.
Once, there was other-kind. Like us, but not like us. Moist and warm. Supple and sweet. With dark-hot-rich pumping blood. With juicy organs cradled in layers of succulent fat.
Their meat … their meat filled and satisfied.
But they are long gone.
Their great den-places are burned and flooded, rusted and crumbled, barren and overgrown. Bad places. Dangerous places. Full of sharp things that snag and cut, heavy things that fall-crush-break, hidden things that roar and explode in fiery thunder. Holes, pools, pits. Bad, dangerous places.
Sometimes, our kind still go there. Drawn by habit, by hunger, by hope. Searching for the other-kind, for the meat that fills and satisfies.
A few who go, return. Most who go, do not. None who go, find.
There are only rumors.
Always, rumors.
Rumors of strongholds where other-kind gather behind high barricades, with weapons that can skull-shatter from far distances. In the strongholds are dens that stay bright and hot and dry as a summer day, even on the wettest winter night. In the strongholds are plump and tender other-kind, protected by fast and powerful other-kind.
Rumors of a single enormous many-denned structure, where water leaps and fabulous things glitter, and all is splendid decoration, and there the other-kind are packed so numerous that we could eat and eat and eat until our guts burst. An endless feast.
Rumors.
So many rumors.
None true.
But some of our kind believe, and even go. Hoping. Hungry.
Always, always so very hungry.
We groom as the sun climbs. The burly one, sitting on a sand pile above the den’s opening, has a freshly-split scalp. It hangs in a tattered fold over a shriveled ear. Dull bone shows through. Damaged ones cluster around the burly one. Our leader. They are servile and deferential, eager to please, currying favor.
The legless one tears away that patch of skin and tangled hair. Offers it back to the burly one, who ignores it. The tiny shrunken one darts in to snatch at the morsel, misses, scrambles up the legless one’s torso to grab again. They squabble until the burly one cuffs them both. Absently. With a grunt of annoyance. The half-faced one takes advantage of this show of displeasure to sidle in and resume the grooming.
There was a recent battle. Another group. Territory and dispute. We stood tall, with arms upraised to seem larger, we groaned and wailed to seem fearsome, and when they would not give way, we fought.
We won.
We drove them off. We brought down two of them, crushed their heads, ate their meat. A salt-crust and a smoked. Some of us were scratched, gouged, bitten. The burly one’s scalp was split. Some had fingers broken, dry-snap like twigs. But we won.
Our group is strong.
Our leader is strong.
The legless one chews and chews, jawbone working, straggles of skin and hair hanging out of a mouth-corner. The tiny shrunken one crouches nearby, poised to lunge for any tidbit that falls. The half-faced one finds a swelling on the burly one’s shoulder and squeezes it between hard thumbnails until a pebble-sized tick is forced out, and the half-faced one eats it.
A sentry gives an alarm and all grooming stops. We wait, ready.
Dirt and brittle brush. Ridges of coarse stone. Dunes and cracked-parched gullies. The wide-above sky, no clouds, no damp, no sense of coming damp. Faraway shapes of bird-kind. The intense fireball of sun.
No challenge-call from a rival group. No help-call from one of our own. No entreaty-call from a stranger wanting to join us, or the hail-call of a wandering one come with news and rumors.
The air is silent, hot and still. There is only the whir and hum and click of bug-kind. It makes us hungry. Even for that poor meat.
We wait.
Some of us – hopeful, foolish – cannot keep from searching for a sign of the other-kind. The sound-throb-vibration of their machines, their music, their weapons, their voices.
Hopeful. Foolish.
There is a group, we know from more rumors, who fed on other-kind that came from the sky in huge shining things. That group has stayed ever since, basking on sun-heated strips of black stone, waving the sticks that once summoned the huge shining things down from the sky.
Very hopeful. Very foolish.
Very hungry.
Always, so very, very hungry.
The sentry gives the alarm again. A threat-warning. Long dry growth rustles and ripples. Dust puffs and drifts. The low forms of beast-kind appear. Narrow, lean, and rangy. Matted pelts. Muzzles and teeth. Flat yellow eyes.
They growl their hate of us. They hunker and piss wet-yellow in their fear.
The burly one heaves up from the sand. The biggest one and the tall quick one also shake off or push away their attendants, and rise to face the beast-kind.
So do I.
The marked one.
The marks cover my arms from wrists to shoulders. They go all around my torso. Dark whorls and intricate lines. Smoke-black and blood-red. Like shadows beneath my skin. Symbols. Images.
Some believe that the marks protect me, keep me safe. The marks are why I have lasted so long, and stayed so whole.
There is a small-finger missing on one hand, the stump charred over. A chunk is gone from my calf, the wound an irregular scoop where the flesh was bitten away in a greedy mouthful. An ear-rim was torn off in some battle.
The beast-kind piss and growl even more as we confront them. They want to leap upon us and rip us to pieces. They want to flee from us as fast as their four legs will carry them. They would not eat our meat but shun it, kick dirt over it, squirt more of their yellow fear-piss onto the ground where it is buried. If they did bite off and swallow some part of us, they would vomit it out and then kick dirt and squirt piss.
All of the beast-kind fear and hate us.
They know we are hungry. They know we want to kill them and gorge ourselves on their meat that fills but does not quite satisfy. They know we would seek out their vulnerable little ones, eat them helpless, blind and squeaking. That is why they fear us.
They know we are not the other-kind. That is why they hate us. That is why they would destroy us, if they could. If they found one of us alone or unwatchful, they would attack. Tearing with jaws and claws. Goring with horns. Kicking and trampling with hard hooves.
All of the beast-kind … but these ones … these beast-kind who once shared dens with the other-kind, who remember them as we do, who search for them as we do … they hate us most of all.
We are not alone, and we are not unwatchful.
We are many, and strong, and ready.
The burly one raises both arms, and groans at the beast-kind. Daring them. Inviting them to come and try, come and try, we will peel their hides and break their bones and pull out their guts, we will scoop their eyeballs from their sockets and pop them sweet and juicy in our teeth.
The biggest one does the same. So does the tall and quick one.
So do I.
So do the sentries, and the attendants, and the rest of our group. Soon we are all standing tall – those of us who can stand – atop the dunes and hills around our den. Standing tall with arms raised, groaning and wailing.
We are too many for them, too strong, too ready. But they are too many for us, too fast, too agile. A fight would be costly for both sides, and we all know it.
The beast-kind shrink and slink and finally retreat into the long grass. The burly one’s arms come down. The sentries go back to their places. The grooming continues.
I sit with my leg bent, inspecting my calf. The hole is not deep, but it is tricky, and sometimes damp collects there, or the bug-kind burrow into it no matter how often I scour it out with sand. I present my back to the hollow one, who picks carefully, so as not to damage the marks that cover it in their intricate smoke-black and blood-red designs.
Only the hollow one has the patience and precision for this. Only I find the hollow one useful enough to keep.
The hollow one is sun-dried and frail, scant meat clinging to thin bones. Knuckles and elbows and knees and chin are exposed where stretched-taut skin has split or worn away. Below the ribs is a gaping open cavity. No organs nestle there except for a single dusty and deflated lung. The spine is a knobby ridge. Strands of gristle and cords of muscle crisscross like thick webs, helping to hold the hollow one’s upper and lower halves together.
At last the day’s heat shines full upon us. The shadows are chased away. The grooming is finished. We can forage and hunt.
Some stay behind to guard our den, and the ones who cannot move well. They will dig and clean. They keep watch. The rest of us follow the burly one, our leader.
Bug-kind, we eat as we find them. Into the mouth, crunch, a spurt of bitterness and the barest teasing taste of meat. Ants and grubs. Long wriggling many-legged things. Spiders and scorpions. Hard-shelled beetles. All too squirmy to carry back to the den alive, and too small to bother carrying back dead.
There are bird-kind that can be eaten in a single bite, and bird-kind with wings as wide as our outstretched arms that can be shared. There are eggs hidden in nests beneath bushes, or up in the branching forks of trees … eggs that are so delicate a wrong grip can crush them into a warm-runny-gooey mess flecked with bits of shell. Not exactly meat, but good just the same.
Fish-kind, we do not often find, because fish-kind will only be where it is wet, and we stay far from the wet places. Creeks that flow and trickle, or pools that are deep and still … those are bad.
Then there are beast-kind. From the small and quick to the large and lumbering. Lone stealthy hunters and huge massing herds. Long coiled ones, with scales and darting tongues. Slow-moving ones, with soft meat inside bony plates. Furry bodies with skinny naked tails. Spiny-bristly-pokey ones.
We hunt. We forage. Alert for the pack that had come near our den to growl their hate. Crunching bug-kind and small birds, not finding much else. Two of the bony-plated ones, a few long-coiled ones. A single large bird … but not large enough.
The first large beast-kinds we see are of a kind we have often tried to hunt before, and usually failed. Like the pack of beast-kind that came to growl at us from the grass, these ones hate us as well as fear us. If we go close, they will rear up and kick out and knock down and trample flat.
We range farther. Following the burly one through a territory that seems almost empty, knowing what this means. Knowing we will have to leave our den and move on. Into the changed and the unfamiliar. New territory, new den, new rivals, new threats.
But … new meat.
For meat, we would do whatever we had to do.
So very hungry.
The sun is at its highest when the burly one leads us to a place where the ground is cut by a narrow straight flatness. An other-kind thing from the days long gone.
It is hard like stone, dark like stone. Where it is not covered in dune-drifts and sheets of sand, it holds the sun’s warmth well into the night. But we rarely come here, because it is the edge of our territory.
The battle was here. The burly one grinds teeth and rubs at the spot where the scalp was torn into that hanging ragged flap.
The bones are mostly as we left them, scattered on the hard sun
-warmed flatness. Some have been buried in wind-blown sand, some taken away by scavengers. But most are still there. Stripped of every speck of meat, the long legbones cracked and sucked clean of marrow. We left skulls smashed like eggshells, the dense meaty brains scooped out and triumphantly devoured.
There is another other-kind place on the far side. The remains of a structure, with bright-sharp glints in the corners of square holes. Stout posts. Round rings made of some solid black stuff, even harder to chew than the tough flesh of our own kind. Jumbles of rusted machine-parts. Long snarls of thorny wire.
We pause, alert for trouble. The wind blows gritty, swirling sand and sending bristles of dry bush bouncing past.
A fur-covered, long-eared beast-kind hops and sniffs, hops and sniffs. A few small bird-kind dart and flit. Nothing else moves.
Our rivals seem nowhere nearby.
The burly one beckons, commands. We follow. Onto the flatness and heat. The air ripples around us. Puddles of not-wet glimmer in the distance. The sun is hot and good.
We cross the flatness. Beyond our territory, now, into theirs.
The tall quick one makes a sudden lunge at the long-eared beast-kind. It goes rigid in terror. Then its nose twitches, its hindlegs spring. But that instant of terror was enough. The tall quick one has it. A single wrenching bite and the beast-kind’s throat is gone. Its hindlegs kick-flail-jerk, go limp.
Meat.
Not much meat. Not enough meat. And we are all so very hungry.
Two mouthfuls each. Fresh warm meat and slippery guts. Tufts of fur pasted to our faces by sticky crusts of drying blood.
We move on.
Toward the crumbling structure made by the other-kind.
The biggest one objects.
The burly one commands again, with rising irritation.
We all know that sometimes there is food to be found in such places. Strange food-relics left by the other-kind, encased in metal that is bulged and weakened and distorted, easy to break open. Sometimes the food within is even meat of sorts … the meat of fish-kind or bird-kind or beast-kind ... never the meat of other-kind … and most of the time it is plant stuff, inedible … but sometimes there is food.